parties should
follow the carts and pull the turnips from the drills, and throw them
into the carts at once. It is an invariable rule with me that the
turnips are filled by hand in wet weather. Advantage should be taken of
fine weather to secure a good stock of turnips, and a good manager will
always provide for a rainy day. A very considerable proportion of
turnips should be stored, to wait the severe winters very often
experienced on the north-east coast. If I had sufficient command of
labour, I would store the greater part of my Swedish turnips (if ripe).
I would, however, store only a proportion of the Aberdeen yellow, as
they lose the relish, and cattle prefer them from the field; but I
require a proportion of them for calving cows in frost. Frosted turnips
make cows with calf abort, and rather than give calving cows such
turnips I would order them straw and water. Fresh Swedish turnips are
indispensable to feeding cattle during the winter. It is a sorrowful
sight to see a gang of men with picks taking up turnips in a frosty
day, leaving a third of the produce on the land, and the turnips going
before your bullocks as hard as iron. We have almost every year a week
or ten days' fine weather about Christmas, and this should be taken
advantage of to store turnips, if not stored previously. I have tried
all the different modes of storing recommended. I shall not enter on
the minutiae of the subject, as it is now generally so well understood;
and I need only urge here that the roots should not be bled in any way,
that the tops should not be taken off too near to the bulbs, that the
tails be only switched, and that they be pitted and secured
_every_ night to keep them free from frost and rain. I have
adopted my friend Mr Porter of Monymusk's plan (in a late climate and
where Swedish turnips in some years never come to full maturity) of
pitting them upon the land where they grow, from one to two loads
together; and, although not quite ripe, I have never seen a turnip go
wrong when stored in this manner. The land also escapes being poached,
as the turnips are carted in frost, and at a time when the other
operations of the farm are not pressing. A foot of earth will keep them
safe, and they are easily covered by taking a couple of furrows with a
pair of horses on each side of the line of pits.

In a week or ten days after the first lot of cattle is taken up from
grass, a second lot is taken up. This is a further relief to